Nils Larsen, one of the co-developers of the Hok (a skinned ski or a 'skishoe'), carving smooth turns on the descent of a hill he had just climbed with the same boards.

A Ski for All Snowshoers

by Andy
Dappen

Sitzmark
Ski Area, Washington. It was a world-record gathering of ‘Hoksters’ with over 75
people either bringing their own Hoks or wanting to test the ‘demo’ Hoks brought
to the event by Altai Skis headquartered in Curlew, Washington. “We’ve never
had this many people skiing Hoks at one event before,” said Nils Larsen, one of
the co-owners of Altai Skis.

The
occasion here at Sitzmark, a community ski hill located 20 miles northeast of
Tonasket, was the HokFest, the first event of its kind celebrating a product
that some would call a sliding snowshoe, others a grippy ski. The Hok (pronounced hawk) is a short (125 cm
or 145 cm), wide ski that has a permanent climbing skin covering about half of
its length. The skin and short length allow the ski to climb quite well; yet when pointed downhill, it
delivers a moderate but not overly fast glide.

Hok's come in a junior size and in two sizes for adults.

About
a third of the 75 participants of the event had brought Hoks they owned and
were looking for tips to use these ‘skishoes’ with greater proficiency. The
other two-thirds were testing the product. Snowshoes, they knew, were easy to
master but also tedious to use, particularly coming downhill when gravity might
make a decent more enjoyable on skis. Meanwhile, they knew cross-country skis
were fun on gentle terrain but easy to pile-up on steeper slopes or in tricky
snow conditions.

The
Hok, these testers hoped, might solve these problems and give users a product
that walked uphill like a maneuverable snowshoe yet came downhill like a
controllable ski. In other words it might deliver the best of both worlds –
which is why people came from Seattle, Twisp, Mazama, Republic, and Spokane to
give the Hoks a go.

About half of the crew participating in HokFest.

I
came from Wenatchee partly because Hoksters like Hanne Beener from Leavenworth
kept telling me that I didn’t know what I was missing, and partly because Nils
Larsen, the co-owner of Altai Skis, was
a friend who also insisted I didn’t know what I was missing.

So
I came, not knowing what I was missing, but a little pessimistic that the Hoks
would offer me something that my downhill skis, backcountry skis, cross-country
skis, or snowshoes couldn’t do better.

My
bias cracked a smidge when I ran into Don Portman from Winthrop. Don has become
an enthusiastic Hokster and was showing newbies like me how versatile these skishoes
were on both sides of the equation – going up and coming down. In the Nordic
worlds of skate, classic, and telemark skiing, Portman is a skier’s skier and a
Northwestern legend, so the fact that the Hoks filled a niche for him carried weight.

He
told me he valued these short, fat boards because he could just clip them on
and go – no waxing or scraping, no skinning or deskinning, no tightening or loosening
of boots, no clamping or unhinging of bindings. “I can ski the local hills, climb
a snowed-over road, or wander through forests near my house with no fiddling of
gear. Even if I only have 30 minutes, it’s enough to do something fun in the
snow.”

Binding options for the Hoks include three-pin bindings (pictured) for use with light weight telemark boots and the universal binding accommodating many different boots.

Portman
insisted, however, the Hoks were not just for knocking around or casual snow
play. He has also enjoyed using them on ski tours of intermediate difficulty
because there was none of the usual fiddling with skis, skins, and boots. “Friends
tease me that I should be on ‘real’ skis but then I ask them, ‘Who’s the first
one up and the first one down?’”

I
received a little clinic on descending with the Hoks from Portman and
immediately saw that, when using flimsy boots, the secret to the system's
stability and versatility was ditching the two-pole technique of normal skiing, and
adopting the old (and mainly forgotten) technique of using a single staff. The
indigenous people of the Altai Mountains in China have skied on skinned skis
for thousands
of years
(really!) and have used the single staff they call a ‘tiak’ (pronounced
tieyak) to maintain stability when skiing downhill with slipper-like boots
attached by rawhide bindings to long skis. The staff provides a third leg of
support and allows one to charge downhill and swerve
around obstacles despite flimsy footwear.

The DNA from which the Hok evolved: skinned skis with rawhide bindings from China.

Portman
showed me how to position my weight back, but not too far back, on the staff
and how to roll my knees toward the direction I wanted to turn. After only two
runs, I Hoked down a moderately tight tree run sprinkled with inconsistent snow
that I would have been hesitant to ski.

Next
I talked to John Magoteaux (pictured left) of Curlew, Washington who arrived with his own Hoks
and was descending Sitzmark executing smooth, fluid turns using a tiak. He
showed me some of the finer points of positioning the tiak for better balance, which
helped me negotiate the steeper slopes on the ski hill. I could control the
terrain with these lightweight skis and my flimsy leather boots partly because
the skins scrubbed some of the downhill speed of normal skis, partly because the
tiak created such an effective tripod to stabilize balance. With these factors in
play, it didn’t take that much talent to come down the hill on my feet rather
than my face.

Magoteaux
told me, “I’ve got several pairs of snowshoes in the garage but, since my wife
and I started using the Hoks, the snowshoes have become so dusty I can’t even
see their logos.”

Later
I talked to Linda Green a Forest Service employee living near Curlew. Similar
to Portman, she likes skiing anywhere – fields, hills, mountains, forests, roads
-- using the Hoks because there’s no fussing. You put them on and go … up or
down. An intermediate telemark skier, she was initially reluctant to use a
tiak. “For quite a while I tried to do traditional telemark turns with the Hoks
using two ski poles and I was falling in difficult snows and getting frustrated.
When I switched to the tiak, I stopped falling.”

Toward
the end of the day I skied with Nils Larsen from Altai Skis and the co-designer
of its products (pictured below). We skied a slope with variable snows and some underlying brush
that would have slowed me down and even been potentially dangerous on normal
skis. With our weight back slightly on the tiak and our ski tips rising out of
the snowpack, we skimmed over these areas quite easily.

Larsen
told me how he adopted what he learned while skiing with skinned skis and tiaks
from the skiers of the Altai Mountains in China. He’s modernized their skis,
skins, and bindings but this was really ancient technology that worked. His is
a story about going forward to the past. Using the tiak took time to embrace
because Larsen was a product of modern two-pole skiing. Two-pole skiing has its
place for good skiers using stiff, more supportive, and heavier equipment.
Larsen, however, was striving to make a lightweight, no-fuss, versatile,
go-anywhere ski system and, using two-pole technique, he was incapable of keeping
up with Chinese, herdsmen who were flying down the mountains on low-tech gear with
a tiak. “As soon as I switched over, I realized that the third point of
stability solved all the issues of lightweight gear, flexible boots, short
skis, and variable snow. Plus just having one thing in your hands is so much
simpler.”

The
other issue Larsen was trying to solve with his simplified system pertained to
cost. “Backcountry skiing is really expensive. Skis, boots, bindings, poles,
and skins can easily run $2400 if you’re buying everything new. We wanted the
cost of using Hoks similar to the cost of using a high-end snowshoe.”

The
Hoks run $220 for the skinned ski. Then, depending on what boots you already
own and plan to use with the boards, bindings will run $65 (3-pin telemark
binding) to $108 (a hinged universal binding accommodating many boots). Given
that high-end snowshoes run $200 to $300 per pair, Larsen has remained in sight
of his affordability goal.

A
day at HokFest either brainwashed me or helped me see the light -- I headed home with a new purchase. The next
day I headed out my door and skied a slope next to my house. The snowpack was
only a few inches deep and stumps of burnt sagebrush and blades of grass stuck
out of the snow. Keeping my weight back on the single staff, I skied down a
hill of intermediate steepness wearing lightweight leather boots. I had good
control and, with my weight back slightly and stabilized by the tiak, I did not
feel reckless skiing a slope with so little snow. This would not have been the
case with normal skis -- they would have slid too fast and having them bottom
out on dirt or a stump could have easily sent me soft face flying toward
something hard. Without needing to remove the skis, skin up, or loosen boots, I
climbed back up and repeated the circuit. Already I had other slopes in mind
for the next day. The others were right: I hadn’t known what I was missing.